Reformationssymphonie

«Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott» (A Mighty Fortress is Our God): The words were written by Martin Luther himself, the melody by his musical companion Johann Walter, and the popular setting was later provided by Johann Sebastian Bach. The song has enormous symbolic power for the Reformation and the Protestant faith. In 1830 the Confessio Augustana, the Augsburg Confession, was 300 years old. To celebrate the occasion, Felix Mendelssohn wrote the symphony that is chronologically his second but was published posthumously as his fifth. In it, he quotes not only the chorale mentioned above but also the «Dresden Amen», a cadence formula from church music that Richard Wagner later used as a Grail motif in his «Parsifal». Of course, Mendelssohn placed his own unshakable faith above all in Bach. His great six-voice Ricercar, a particularly elaborate fugue from the «Musikalisches Opfer» in Anton Webern’s orchestration, forms the framework for Dmitri Shostakovich’s Second Violin Concerto in the concept by Tomáš Netopil, a popular regular guest on the Tonkunstler podium, together with Mendelssohn’s «Reformation Symphony». At that time, 1967, a major anniversary was also being celebrated: the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution. Debutant Fedor Rudin takes on the solo part in Shostakovich’s magnificently internalised work, the document in sound of a refusal.